


Son of a Gun

by JD_Centric



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King, Rage - Fandom, Rage - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Bonding, Bowers Gang - Freeform, Bowers gang centric, Child Abuse, Feelings, Fictional timeline, Friendship, Gore, Henry Bowers Being an Asshole, Homophobic Language, Horror, Just a bit hugs and kisses, Mental Abuse, Mental Torture, Multi, Murder, Parental Abuse, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Racial slurs, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking, Unrequited Crush, Violence, minor sexual situations, parental neglect, physical abuse of a minor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-08-27 06:16:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16697017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JD_Centric/pseuds/JD_Centric
Summary: Lately, the ink isn’t the only thing on Charlie’s mind anymore. He catches himself, instead, thinking about the summer he never told Joe McKennedy about.//The fictional account of what would've happened if the Bowers gang was in the centre of the IT plot; a rewriting of the novel with the presence of another one of Stephen King's lesser-known characters.//





	1. Welcome to Derry (Prologue)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, reader, nice of you to come by! Thank you sincerely for checking OUT this work in progress and I hope that you'll enjoy it. It's my first try writing anything for the IT fandom and you'll probably recognise a bunch of bits taken from a lot of other King books if you get off on his literature the way I do. Actually, I've been meaning to do something with the Bowers gang since I watched the movie and tried the book again (I still like it less than the rest but...) and crossing the IT world with "Rage", my most favourite story by King, was kind of a natural thought. I still don't know where this will go, it's been a long time since I've written fanfics or even posted on here, but I hope you stay till the end. Never be shy to comment and let me know how or if you've liked the prologue and I'll try to post some more of this by the end of the week! :) Tags and relationships will eventually be added when I figure them out.
> 
> (KEEP IN MIND, THIS TAKE ON IT AND THE NOVEL RAGE ARE PURELY FICTIONAL AND THOUGH SOME OF THE ACTION IS BASED ON ACTUAL PARTS OF BOTH BOOKS THEY ARE PURELY THE FANTASY OF A FAN. THE CHARACTERS AND TITLES ARE OWNED BY MR. KING.)

 The ink on their hands is hardly the only thing Charlie E. Decker fears now. It’s no longer the only thing occupying his sick mind and most nights even the jigsaw puzzles do little to distract him from the dust bunnies waiting for him to dip his hands in the darkness under the bed. He barely even remembers the Cherokees and their nose-job ritual anymore if the ghostly face of Patrick Hockstetter isn’t there to remind him of it. Which brings him to the very reason he stays awake at night, staring at his yearbook like an Indian looking up at the contorted wooden faces of a totem where the monsters of a time long past bare their teeth to strike fear into the hearts of men. If Charlie ever looked hard enough at the top of that imaginary totem and the beasts carved into it with careful hands, bleeding hands, he thinks he just might see the white-painted face and bloody red smile stretched over long carved teeth. He thinks he just might see the ginger curls and one gloved hand waving down at him to say hello, my old friend. Hello, Chuck! He’d smell the faint hint of salt and butter and hear the rapid popping of popcorn and he would gag around the spoonful of custard they feed him with.

 Lately, the ink isn’t the only thing on Charlie’s mind anymore. He catches himself, instead, thinking about the summer he never told Joe McKennedy about.

 

_Charlie Decker sees the dust bunnies_

The first time it happens, Charlie Decker’s lying alone in his holding cell with a heavy heart and upset stomach but no Ritz crackers to help him. It’s been nearly a week now since his last court hearing and Charlie’s fears of being sent to Greenmantle have become prayers. What he thinks now is that they’ll strap him right to Ol’ Sparky to watch him sizzle or give him a few good years in Shawshank to tame some of his teen spirit. He can’t even imagine that just a few months later the old cell will become a tight room in Augusta State Hospital and the dirty sink in the corner a bedside table where he will keep his neat stack of assorted letters, all signed by Joe McKennedy, and another few years later a few cheap copies of novels by Bill Denbrough. Now, what Charlie wants is to close his eyes and ignore the cramps for long enough to fall into uneasy sleep. Maybe he can stop to imagine Sandy Cross again, Sandy and her white panties, or Sandy under Ted Jones in the back of his car. But Charlie doesn’t want to think of Ted and when he does, all he can see is the ink dripping down his hair. The mind is a wonderful thing. It always makes you remember all the shitty bits.

 A sudden groan from the rusted pipes of the sink startle him out of his daze and Charlie sits up. The old mattress under him wheezes. Patience, old flamer, he thinks. I’ll be off your back in time to feed the birds.

 Then, out of the blue, the image of Sylvia Ragan crossed his mind. Sylvia and her fingers digging in her bag for her cigarettes, Sylvia the big girl and the very elegant way she lit the death stick. Something heavy coils in the pit of his stomach and, as his eyes follow the grey shadow of something (he decides it’s a branch, convinces himself he’s right though there are no trees for miles) run through the floor to hide under his cot, Charlie’s mind came up with the bizarre thought that the way Sylvia Ragan lit the lighter that beautiful day in the classroom reminded him a lot of the way Patrick Hockstetter toyed with his own. Such a foolish thought. Why, though? Because Charlie shouldn’t have remembered him in the first place but he does, and he remembers well the time he almost burned his eyebrows off with that old lighter, that old slut.

 The copper pipes groan again and Charlie hears a muted gurgle come from the drain. Kind of like blood bubbling in someone’s throat while he chokes. Charlie remembers the time Carl Decker threw him on his back when he was just four – his cries later had sounded just the same while the breath rushed through his windpipe. Slowly, he climbs to his feet and listens to hear another noise come through the drain. He must’ve looked ridiculous, even worse than when he climbed back to his feet with the hole of the bullet burned into his breast pocket, into Titus, his trusty padlock, that old skinner. Even now his fingers reach mindlessly to touch the place of memory. It still hurts, hurts more than the three bullet wounds that bled that day that old cop killed him. But Charlie wasn’t dead. God, why wasn’t he dead?

 Nothing came from the sink and Charlie turned around to go back to bed. A fine sheen of sweat covered his face and the pain in his stomach only grew. It reminded him not of the day he sat eating crackers in the toilet stall before his meeting with Mr Denver but of that evening he took a shortcut home through Memorial Park, the night he passed the Standpipe and saw…

 A dusty hand shot out from the darkness under the bed. Claw-like fingers wrapped around his ankle and Charlie screamed. He could feel them through the jumper he wore, could hear the giggles and laughs replace the groaning of the pipes. They came like an eerie choir from underneath the bed where the shadows had hidden, waiting for their time to attack. They got him good, they did. When Charlie looked down, his horrified eyes met the sight of the dirty hand, dry skin hanging off a set of hollow bones, but it was in no way weak. It held him tightly, like a steel cuff, like the ones they put on him when they dragged him into the courtroom.

 “We found you, Chuck.” The voices said, their cruelty branding his heart and mind. He could barely recognize them but, vaguely, Charlie thought he knew them. Old and new ones overlapping like a badly recorded tape. Sandy Cross, Dick Keene, Pig Pen, Sylvia Ragan and Irma Bates, oh, Irma Bates, she screamed the loudest. “You’re never leaving us, Chuck, you’ll always be here with us, _we’ll always be there to catch you_ …”

 “Look down here, Charlie.” The hand beckons and a cold chill runs down his spine as he remembers who the voice belongs to. “Look over here, c’mon, you old flamer!”

 He shakes his head enough to stir a bit of the old grey matter but his brain doesn’t work like it has to. The hand never goes away and the voices laugh, they laugh at him and his childish behaviour, as they would have before. They’re not as cruel anymore as those of his classmates. They’re kind even, as cool as kisses, and they tickle his ears, sparking the good old memories of summer warmth, greywater, the horror show. There’s something familiar, old and comforting like the pages of a beloved book, like the taste of Ritz crackers. But nevertheless, they also remind him of the stench of vomit that lingered in Joe McKennedy’s car after he threw up in the backseat. Charlie thinks that if he throws up now, he’ll never be able to go back to the same cell ever again.

 “Take a look, Charlie, old skinner.” The voices say again. “Take a look and float like the rest of us, don’t you want to _float like the rest of us_?!”

 The hand tugs suddenly and mercilessly until Charlie finds himself on the dirty cell floor, face to face with the monster in the darkness. A grim face stares back at him, dry lips stretched in a haunting smile over two rows of rotting teeth. The corpse is surrounded by a whole flock of cotton balls, no, of _dust_. They roll out from beneath the bed and steadily march towards him, crawling up his legs and leaving behind dirt and mud. The smell of sewage water washes over him and Charlie nearly faints.

 “You’ll float too, you’ll float too, you’ll float too…!” The voices chant, those of the dead and those of his classmates. The dust bunnies leave behind long streaks of ink as they clamber over him like hungry piranhas. “ _You’ll float, you’ll float, you’ll float, Chuck_!”

 Charlie screamed, kicking away the godawful hand. He crawls towards the door of his cell, climbing back to his feet only when he uses the bars covering the rectangle window at its top to pull himself up. He bangs his fists on the heavy steel, screaming through the bars until the lights in the hall outside flicker on and he hears the heavy patter of the guard’s shoes running towards him.

 “Let me out!” Charlie begs, his throat raw and dry. “Please, get me out! Get me out, get me out, get me out of here, please! Don’t let them get me, don’t let them get me, God! Don’t let _it_ get me!”

 The hand disappears quietly into the dark again along with the ink and the dust bunnies but the laughter and the voices never do, not completely. They never will, they are, after all, part of the reason Charlie never saw Ol’ Sparky or got a taste of the prison discipline. Instead, they reminded him of the old days, of the old friends and old town…It was then, approximately two years ago, when Charlie Decker started _really_ losing his mind.

 

_Henry Bowers gets a smoke_

 Charlie Decker was eleven when his family moved to Derry, Maine, and twelve when his mom bought him the corduroy suit. He wore it a couple of times to church on Sundays and to Bible meetings on Thursday nights and it was one of the things that grew on him in time. Mom always made sure to make him look good so the neighbours wouldn’t talk, God forbid, and as Carl Decker had more or less given up on him by then, he was entirely her responsibility. It was the only suit Charlie owned, with a nice set of three snap-on bow ties to go with it, and Mrs Denbrough that lived just down the street had complimented him once while they were walking with Mom to church. Charlie should have known, however, that the suit was not his friend. He realized it when his mother made him wear it to Bill Denbrough’s birthday party that year.

 God’s his holy witness, Charlie tried every trick there was in the book to get her to reconsider. No way was he showing up to a birthday party wearing the suit when all the other kids would be dressed in jeans and T-Shirts. He tried explaining it to Mom politely, then he begged and nearly cried by the end of it but she was stubborn. That was one of Rita Decker’s best qualities. Charlie tried telling her that he would make a fool of himself, he was a year older than Bill Denbrough and his friends so what if they laughed, what if they gave him a nickname? Those stuck to you like a bad rash till the end of high school! Not only that, Charlie was the new kid in town and that notoriety was plenty for him. He had gotten invited to the celebration only because his mother and Mrs Denbrough had found a good listener in the other – that is, until Mrs Denbrough’s son died and stopped talking much – and he planned on using the opportunity to actually find someone to hang out with instead of doing puzzles with Mom all day long after school.

 But Rita Decker wouldn’t have any of it.

 “Just shut up about it, Charlie.” She told him while fixing his bow tie just before he had to leave. Charlie had made a final pitiful attempt to reason with her but quickly understood when he had gotten too far. His mother was a very gentle woman and so when she said _shut up_ , she meant it and she was probably at the end of her nerves. So if Charlie knew better, and he did, he would have to shut his mouth and swallow the shame.

 “And be careful not to get it dirty!” She called after him while Charlie made his way towards the sidewalk. “Say hello to Mrs Denbrough and don’t forget to be polite! Don’t start eating before Bill does and don’t spill ice cream on your pants…!”

 Gawd.

 So there Charlie Decker was, walking down Witcham Street in his corduroy suit, looking like that one guy with the accordion from that one show Mom liked to watch most evenings. He had never felt more embarrassed. Walking to church in the suit with his Mom there was one thing but being alone with it a whole other problem. What if he skipped? What if he bolted? What if he forgot Bill Denbrough’s birthday and went to catch a movie if there were any good ones? No, bad idea. Mrs Denbrough would just call to tell his mom later and what would he say then? No, it was time to be a man.

 Only there was one thing all men in Derry feared and Charlie learned the hard way never to cross paths with Henry Bowers.

 Henry was a boy his age but studied in the lower grade because he had been held back the previous year and since Charlie rarely went out without his mother, he had never really gotten the chance to interact with him. There were, of course, the rumours and Charlie had heard his fair share of nasty ones. He knew that Henry had poisoned someone’s dog once, that he would beat you up if you didn’t let him copy your answers during tests, that he had nearly stabbed a kid, and that list went on and on until Charlie really couldn’t take it anymore. All of it screamed a very good warning to stay away from the crazy Bowers. But what could he do when Bowers got to him first?

 Just a few blocks away from Bill Denrbough’s house, Charlie heard someone yell his way:

 "Son of a gun, you look slick!"

 Startled by the sudden jeers that erupted then he turned his head to his left. The boys stood together on the sidewalk just across the street. One was pushing along a rusty bicycle and another was counting what had to be pocket money in his clammy palm. He was a bit slower to look up at Charlie but once he did he laughed with the rest and Charlie quickly realized they wouldn’t be laughing with him if he used a bit of self-irony but would keep on laughing _at_ him. He had to say, he would’ve laughed too if he saw some old macho walking in a suit like his in broad daylight.

 "Where are you headed, pretty boy?" The obvious leader of the group continued, even when Charlie ducked his head and kept walking. He really would have liked it if he had said something smart, “To fuck your mom” would’ve been good enough, but instead he muttered a half-hearted “Shut up”.

 "What was that, pretty boy?" The other boy screamed at him and just as Charlie had feared, he crossed the street with the other two to walk beside him. No matter how fast he walked now, the Denbrough’s house seemed so far away. The boy’s palm slapped his neck and Charlie flinched, reaching up to bat it away. No way was he letting someone push him around. He felt really ugly compared to other three kids but he would never let them push him around. “Hey, what you say? Repeat it, come on, pretty boy!”

 “I think the new kid told you to shut up, Hank.” One of the other two boys said and suddenly the Hank in question had a hand wrapped around the back of Charlie’s shirt. He pulled him back and it was so unexpected that Charlie fell back. His bum hit the sidewalk and he looked up at the three grinning mugs leering over him with shock.

 “Yeah, I said shut up!” He exclaimed suddenly. “Shut up and get out my way, you…you…”

 He wanted to say something dirty to show them he wasn’t afraid but his throat closed around the words and he stammered. His cheeks filled with blood and Charlie felt very pathetic. If his dad was there, he probably would’ve joined the three in laughing at him.

"Maybe you think you can shut me up." The boy said and Charlie got up. He shoved him back and all three boys stared at him with surprise now until Henry bared his teeth and swung his fist at him.

 He hit his shoulder without holding back and boy, did that hurt. Charlie was never much of a fighter, probably one of his dad’s greatest disappointments, and he was still mindful of his suit, so when he pushed Henry into the nearest lawn and the other curled his arms around his neck, like he wanted to kiss him, he could do nothing else but wheeze and try to get one last punch in. His small fist punched against his back while Henry bent him forward and into the grass. Finally, the other two stepped in and Charlie felt someone’s knee jab into the small of his back. Someone pushed his face into the ground and his mouth filled with the pungent taste of damp soil and grass. He was desperate but Henry Bowers had support.

 Laughing like a madman, he grabbed Charlie’s hair and slammed his face into the grass while the others held his arms.

"Hey, pretty boy!" Bowers jeered. “Don't you look nice?"

 Another hard slam made him see stars. His head hurt so badly, his senses suddenly numb to anything but the pain and Henry’s voice. With horror, Charlie realized that his eyes were filling with bitter tears. God, no…

"Don't you just look dan-dan-dandy!" Henry Bowers cried, lifting his head once again to slam it into the ground. His grip was unrelenting. "Don't you just look woooonderful!”

 Suddenly the neighbour on whose lawn they were fighting – or on which Charlie was getting it handed to him – ran out to yell at and scold them. He didn’t know Charlie that well yet but he knew the other three by name. Charlie never forgot them either. Henry Bowers, Victor Criss and Reg Huggins.

 The three left him lying on the lawn and, scared off by the threats of the neighbour, ran back across the street so Vic could get his bike. They were gone by the time Charlie got up, crying bravely now. He felt horrible, his head hurt and he could barely take a breath. The back of his shirt was torn and his entire suit was covered in large green stains. That was his first meeting with Henry Bowers.

 The second time he sat down face to face with him, Charlie Decker gave him a cigarette.

 He was fourteen when he walked out of Mr Gedro’s store with a bottle of Pepsi, a large box of Ritz Crackers and, surprisingly, a pack of Winstons in a carefully folded paper pouch held protectively in his hand. It was a very murky day between winter and spring. There was no sun but the puddles of melted snow covering the lot surrounding Mr Gedro’s store proved that it wasn’t as cold as it had been. The downpours that would soon cause the great flood that had him and Carl Decker pumping water out of their basement while the SS Georgie sailed down Witcham Street was near, so near in fact that Charlie could feel something coming. Something bad.

 But, while he walked with his purchase through the gravel-covered lot, the only bad thing close to him was Henry Bowers who he spotted sitting by the bus stop just down the street in the company of Vic Criss and Peter Gordon. A bicycle different from the one he remembered them with that fateful day when he was twelve was perched by the bench beside them. This one belonged to Reg Huggins who Charlie had spotted in the store and had gracefully walked around while he was ogling the newest additions of some magazines, probably pornographic, like the ones he would share with Joe McKennedy and his brother less than two years later. In time that bike would be replaced by his blue Trans Am and then they wouldn’t have to wait for the bus.

 Charlie thought briefly of turning to walk in the opposite direction just to ignore any possible reaction from Henry but then decided not to. The day he beat him up good on the neighbour’s lawn and tore his suit Charlie had ran straight home, forgetting all about Bill Denbrough’s birthday party, afraid and humiliated. He told his mom what had happened and though at first, she was very reluctant to believe him, how could her resolve not crumble when she faced her boy’s distraught tears? She called Mrs Denbrough to let her know he had caught the flue and though neither he nor Henry knew it then or even now, that call ruined Charlie’s chance of making friends in Derry for the next two years of his life in the small town. If he had gone to that birthday party as planned he would’ve met Bill’s friends, Rich Tozier would’ve laughed at his suit before turning it into a friendly joke, Eddie Kaspbrak would’ve stayed aside with him when he couldn’t play tag in fear of getting grass stains on his clothes and all would’ve been swell. Instead, Charlie never got to know those kids as anything more but a bunch of losers, he spent the next years alone and lonely, his summers passed in the library reading newspapers and old comics but no real books though he was a smart boy who never found joy in reading any actual literature like Ben Hanscom (who he thought of briefly when Pig Pen fainted that day in the classroom), and most importantly he was forced to stay home with his old man.

 That was the only reason Charlie chose to keep on walking that day without even crossing the street to walk on the other sidewalk. He couldn’t care less what Bowers did to him and his friends were, for the most part, a bunch of cowards that would probably grow up one day and then their guilty conscience would keep them up till three in the morning to write apology letters to old classmates. They had all grown up over the years and Charlie was not the new kid in town anymore. He knew his way around. So if Henry said something, he would be right there to hand it to him. Charlie doubted he would, he had had no other problem with Bowers or his friends since that one fight on Bill Denbrough’s birthday and Vic Criss even sat beside him in class now. Still, with Henry, nothing was certain. Charlie would come to see that in time and whether that was the thing that chased him out of town or the knowledge that it had infected him during their short-lived friendship, he didn’t know. All he knew then was that Henry was responsible for all the time he spent under the scrutiny of Carl Decker instead of playing with the other kids in the barrens and that’s all that mattered.

 “Hey, Decker!” Henry called after him just as he passed the bus stop and Charlie slowed his step to throw a quick, insignificant look at the three boys. “What you go in the bag, pretty boy?”

 “Some crackers and a bottle of Pepsi.” Charlie replied casually and was amazed by his own courage. Other kids made him nervous, the kids in Derry even more so, but he felt as cool as a cucumber now. Maybe, he decided, he wasn’t that afraid of Bowers, to begin with. Maybe he couldn’t care less about his reputation anymore. There were kids in Derry ready to swear this kid was the Devil but it wasn’t Charlie’s problem, not really. Either that or he didn’t mind talking to anybody lately, as long as it wasn’t a teacher or his mom, he would even settle for Bowers.

 “Then how about you give it here.” Henry said after a beat of confused silence. “Or are you gonna make us take it ourselves?”

 “Sure thing, Henry.” Charlie shrugged. Was it fate or did the wicked and bad attract each other he didn’t know and never found out but he didn’t fear Henry at all then, he never grew to fear him a bit to the day he left Derry. The boy that had slammed his head into the ground and ruined his corduroy suit at twelve was now a bad memory that never grew into a nightmare. So, with the same amount of nonchalance, Charlie walked up to the bench and sat down. Nobody told him to go. “You want a cigarette too, Henry?”

 Bowers fished the packet of Winstons from the paper bag without asking and Charlie let Peter and Vic take one for themselves. He offered one to Reg Huggins when he came back from the store and there they sat until the bus came and it was time to go.

 By the day Charlie Decker saw Georgie Denbrough die by the drain just in front of his house, he was part of the gang. Sure, he wore his solid-colour shirts tucked in his jeans and he was a bigger fan of snickers instead of worker boots but _felt_ part of the gang. He might have been a pretty boy, he still stayed at home most days to study instead of looking for a kid to torment in the barrens or lighting grenades in the old town dump when they could get in, but he still went to the Saturday movies with Henry and the guys, he smoked with them and he definitely spent more time in Reg Huggins’ Trans Am than in Joe McKennedy’s car. Most importantly, they were good friends, they were _great_ friends. Nobody would ever guess by the way they handled each other. Henry had punched Patrick Hockstetter more times than Charlie could count and then there was that thing with the lighter…

 But after all, they were good. What made friends good or bad anyway? Charlie couldn’t say. He could though admit that the best friends he had, he had in Derry. With regards to Joe McKennedy, he was a lovely boy, a great pal, but he would never jump to protect Charlie like Henry had the day he broke Patrick’s nose and Charlie would have never been the first to climb the fence and follow him in that blind chase after Mike Hanlon only a year later. He might have left Derry on bad terms, he still remembered his fight with Vic. He might have skipped town as soon as he felt the heat under his feet but Charlie never stopped thinking of his friends. Bill Denbrough might have had his club, he had his gang.

 They were just friends. Not bad and definitely not good but they were the people Charlie told first about the nasty Cherokee nose-job, about how Carl Decker whacked him once with the wrench in the garage and they hadn’t laughed and called him pansy. Sure they had their downs but, God, was it a bad road with a very nice view they drove down. There were no good friends, no bad ones, just friends, people who you liked spending time with, who you felt whole and alive with, who could tolerate the real you. And Charlie had been himself so many times that if the gang had lived long enough, if they had been smart enough, they would’ve told the cops that Charles E. Decker was fucking nuts. Those were the people that could’ve prevented Placerville, those were the people that would’ve been less surprised than anyone when they read the headlines two years later. If they had been alive to. And maybe it was a good thing they weren’t. Some ghosts of time were best left forgotten. They had been as crazy as him. They could’ve done the same as him with a bit more brains. And, hey, didn’t only Charlie know about the fridge?


	2. Bill Denbrough gets a kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for the one cool dude that bookmarked this piece of bullshit, thanks a lot! It inspired me to keep up with this when I woke up the morning after posting it and thinking 'Damn, do I even have time for this? Who'll even read this bullshit?'. This was just a little note of gratitude and for the rest, I hope you like this next chapter!

The Deckers moved to Derry when Carl Decker was re-stationed in Bangor and though he hated his recruitment job, he fancied the quiet evenings he could spend in front of the TV with a can of cold Budweiser in hand and a watchful eye on his wife. By the time Charlie turned fourteen, Rita Decker had started to mind his company but she would never mind it as much as Charlie did.

 Ever since a very young age (and he guessed he was pretty damn sure because kids could always tell what a grownup was thinking and feeling with a single look), his dad had hated him. He wasn’t over-exaggerating either. It was a kind of cold hatred that Charlie could feel easily but it was all merely an untouchable tension between both of them that never became physical so he couldn’t really tell what Carl Decker wanted of him. He never punished him, mostly because his mother would never allow it, and rarely even scolded him as he grew older. Almost as if Charlie was a decoration, part of the setting at home that never bothered him enough to change or remove. When Charlie had been younger he had tried to seek approval but the desire went away roughly around the time of his first and last hunting trip with dad back when he was still stationed in Boston. They didn’t interact much these days and when they did it was only when Carl needed something done with Charlie’s help (like pumping the water out of the basement the autumn Georgie Denbrough was killed) or during dinner when the silence was too tangible and the faint chatter from the TV too distant.

 In retrospect, Carl Decker wasn’t crazy. He had just expected something…different to come out of his son. He was only disappointed and so he hated Charlie for the effort he had made him give. Good thing Charlie couldn’t care less.

 One evening while the three of them sat around the table for dinner, Mr Decker started one of his short conversations or, as Charlie called them, small talks. They were more like interrogations really, meant to let him know how his only son was doing, how his grades were or what he did after school. He didn’t care, in particular, about any of those things but Charlie was always patient to indulge him. They were rare enough so he didn’t have to feel the bitter need to scream at his face whenever he answered. Charlie was good at keeping up appearances. He prided himself for managing it until the day he snapped.

 “What did you do all day today?” Carl Decker asked him around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. He didn’t even bother to look at him.

 It was already summer in Derry and the school year was over. The day marked his first three months of being part of Henry’s gang and Charlie’s visits to the library had considerably lessened. Instead, he would wait until his friends’ summer classes were over (only Henry and Patrick Hockstetter were forced to take them this year while Vic and Reg had gotten low but passing marks) before following them to the barrens or the town dump where they would skip rocks in the quarry or throw pebbles at broken TV sets or at cans. They would buy the occasional pack of cigarettes to share and a box of crackers for Charlie and would sometimes set the whiskers of a stray cat or the tail of a rat on fire with Patrick’s lighter. That was the most fun there was to do with them but Charlie still found their time incredibly amusing. Sometimes Moose Sadler and Peter Gordon would join them for a game of baseball but Charlie preferred playing around the remains of the Kitchener Ironworks and looking for ghosts where there were none.

 Not even a few miles away from their favourite places, while they tortured stray animals or disease-infested rodents, Bill Denbrough would play in the dirty waters crossing the barrens with Eddie Kaspbrak. But Charlie didn’t know that and now, he didn’t care.

 “I was out with friends.” He told Carl Decker.

 “That so? Are you still hanging out with that crazy kid I keep hearing about?” His father asked. His tone was enough to convince Charlie he was asking out of necessity alone and not because he was curious to know about his friends or his son’s hobbies.

 “You better not be getting yourself in trouble, Charlie.” His mother warned. Unlike her husband, Rita Decker was strongly against her son’s new companions. She knew this and that about the kids in Derry and would never allow her own child to be compared to the likes of the delinquents that ran amuck despite the tight leash their daddies kept them on. “It’s not even one crazy kid…I don’t want to hear that you’re getting yourself involved with those…” She grimaced, unable to think of a good enough word. “I better not hear you’re doing what they do.”

 “Of course I don’t.” Charlie lied effortlessly. “We just hang out.”

 “And what about doing something more productive?” Carl scowled. “I heard Zac’s boy got himself a job delivering newspapers. And all you do is waste your time…”

 “Carl, he’s too busy studying. He spends a lot of time out doing God knows what…I don’t want him to fall behind because he has another excuse.”

 “It’s no excuse, he’s old enough to be earning his own money!” His father disagreed. He always disagreed with Mom lately and Charlie could tell their spark was long dead. He felt guilty sometimes knowing he’s the only thing keeping them together and thus turning into an unwitting accomplice of their miserable marital life.

 “I do work.” Charlie said carefully, uncertain if he should finish. “I help out at the Bowers farm from time to time.”

 “The Bowers farm?” Carl almost exclaimed. “That old piece of land by that nigger’s farm?!”

 “The owner’s that crazy Bowers the whole town’s talking about?” His mother interrupted, finding a better thing to mention that her husband’s racial issue.

 “And does he even pay you?” He continued. “I know for a fact he can’t even feed his boy, let alone pay for a farmhand!”

 Feeling awful for even mentioning it, Charlie kept quiet. Eventually both his parents dropped the subject and the only sound to be heard in the tight kitchen was that of the silverware grazing the porcelain plates.

 “I don’t want you hanging around that place, Chuck.” Mr Decker said that evening, using the name he had for him since he was a child. Charlie hated that name if only because his dad called him it and so it would disturb him that much more when eventually, he heard it whispered through the drain of the kitchen sink. “I mean it, stay away from the Bowers farm. It’s bad enough you have a bunch of niggers around there, I don’t want that old drunk making a fool of you.”

 For the first time in a while, Charlie could see it all over his mother’s face that she agreed with that.

 But, unfortunately, Charlie was not a good listener. He was, of course, foolish enough to return to the Bowers farm the following week to help Henry with his chores (it had been more of an order than a plea or offer the way Henry had put it). Only Moose and he had agreed to go while all the rest had found their excuse, not because they were afraid of a little housework – though that played a great role – but because they were all afraid of Henry’s crazy dad. And Charlie knew crazy when he saw it. He also knew he could handle Butch Bowers if he tried hard enough, for Henry’s sake if anything, though there were times he strongly doubted it. He had enough daddy issues at home, he didn’t need more. Being around Butch also made him feel like he was slowly soaking in an invisible disease or was being engulfed by a thick cloud of germs that ate away at his brain. Whatever madness he had returned from the war with, Charlie was most afraid of catching it.

 That’s why when, a day after working under the scorching sun and picking corn, Charlie heard the voice come from the pipes his first thought was that he had finally lost his mind. The second one was that he had spent a bit too much under the sun and it was just his mind playing tricks on him. There was no need for him to be sick to hear things. For all he knew, it might have been a squeak or the water gurgling in the copper maze under the house. But he had heard the very audible voice, that of a little girl, calling out to him through the drain:

 “Chuck…”

 The day was humid and the distant claps of thunder promised a downpour. Mrs Decker was out shopping and Charlie was alone in the house with Mr Decker. It was Sunday, so his dad would spend the majority of the day working in the garage before going inside to grab a beer and settle on the porch to watch the kids riding their bikes down Witcham Street.

 Curious but not as frightened as he would become in a moment, Charlie Decker peeked into the sink. He stared down the black eyehole of the drain as if it held all the secrets of life and death, listening to hear another sound come from its toothless mouth. Maybe it had been just a draft.

 Just as he sat down to enjoy a nice piece of blueberry pie and a glass of Pepsi, Charlie heard the voice again. This time it was louder and it was unmistakably calling out to him. It came from the pipes just under the sink.

 He sat up and dragged his feet across the kitchen to the cupboard, staring at the two wooden doors with doubt. Charlie could barely feel his body moving and later he would recall the memory and think that he had been moved almost against his will by some supernatural force that had somehow found its cosy place in the pipes of the kitchen sink. It was easy to laugh at the nosy characters in the horror or slasher movies but it was a lot harder to fight against the power forcing him to kneel by the cupboard and open the two doors. Nothing jumped out, instead, Charlie was met with the very familiar stack of cleaning supplies, folded rags and a couple of pots. The pipes ran down from the bottom of the white basin and continued under the cupboard and floor through a deep hole. Charlie couldn’t hear a thing anymore and the longer he stared at the long pipe the more he convinced himself he was surely losing it.

 Then he heard it again and this time it was a distant but loud echo spreading through the inside of the pipe.

 “Come play with us, Chuck.” The voice said and Charlie felt a cold chill of fear run through his body like a lightning bolt. A painful spasm struck his poor stomach and sour sweat formed large stains under his armpits as he knelt there on the floor.

 “Who are you?” He asked tentatively, licking his dry lips. If Carl Decker walked in now and saw his son talking to the inside of the cupboard, Charlie would win himself a free one-way ticket to Juniper Hill. “How did you get in there…?”

 “We got lost, Chuck.” The tiny voice whined. “We got lost and now we float down here. Come join us, Chuck. You’ll float too. There’s candy here, and music and popcorn and funnel cakes…”

 “It’s a circus.” Charlie said aloud, though he didn’t know where he had gotten the thought from.

 “Come with us, Chuck.” The voice pled. “It gets lonely here, come float with us.”

 Charlie raised a hand and grabbed the pipe. It was cold and smooth under his fingers as he shook it, waiting to hear something on the inside rattle or the voice to squeal. When he heard nothing, he stood up and walked inside the hall. There in the very tight broom closet, his father kept a rusty toolbox so he wouldn’t have to go to the garage and back when he needed them. Most of the tools were already in the garage anyway and so the box was mostly empty except for a screwdriver and, what Charlie was hoping to find, a wrench. He moved the first aid kit aside to open the toolbox and returned into the kitchen with the thin wrench in hand. He knelt in front of the cupboard a lot more confident than before and his hands didn’t even shake as he reached in to unscrew the stubborn bolts keeping the pipes together. Charlie was smart enough to not believe the voice calling him but he was becoming scared that it would keep playing with him. If he wasn’t careful, Charlie might just answer them while his parents were there and then what?

 Very carefully he undid the tight screws on both sides of a shorter piece of copper connecting the basin of the sink and the one leading into the ground. He left it carefully on the bottom of the cupboard and peeked inside to get a better look at the black hole leading down. He carefully dipped inside the tip of his finger and felt the cold breeze of wind coming from somewhere deep inside the pipe maze running under the houses of Witcham Street. Its walls were slimy and damp with drain water and leftovers of food and grease. Charlie scowled, dipping his finger another inch in.

 “Hey.” He whispered. “Are you there now?”

 Something smooth touched the tip of his finger and Charlie yelped. He took back his hand and in his haste to crawl out of the cupboard he hit his head in the top of the drawer. He fell backwards on the tiled floor and watched baffled as, from the inside of the tight pipe, a big red balloon emerged. It slithered out through the opening without popping and another one, this time orange, followed it. A whole platoon of colourful balloons flew out from the pipe and Charlie watched in fear as the thin ropes tied to their bottoms became bloodier and bloodier with every last balloon. They flew out of the cupboard and into the kitchen like a flock of birds.

 The pipe groaned once the last balloon left it and Charlie nearly screamed when a steady stream of dirty water followed it. He felt the pungent stench of sewage as the stream spilt onto the floor and flowed towards him. The water thickened and soon turned into what had to be dark and rotten blood.

 Scrambling away from the spreading puddle on the floor, Charlie watched as something else crawled out of the pipe. A deep, breathless groan reached his ears. Charlie cried out but his voice was weak and muffled. His mouth was dry, eyes wide as a pair of hands, human hands, came through the pipe. They stretched and cracked like dry leaves before pulling out an entire body. That of a woman.

 “Come float, Chuck…” She rasped, slithering out as if she was made of rubber. “Or do you want me to cut your nose like they did mine!”

 Finally, Charlie screamed. The woman had just raised her head to look at him with dead eyes when he saw her nose, cut in the old Cherokee tradition. He would never forget the night he had first heard the story of the unfaithful Cherokee women that were forced to bear the mark of their sin on their faces and show the rest what part that had gotten them in trouble.

 Carl Decker ran into the kitchen when Charlie’s shrill cries didn’t stop. It went on until he ran out of breath.

 “Chuck?” Carl exclaimed when he saw him shaking against the wall opposite of the opened cupboard. “What’s going on?! What’s wrong with you, why are you screaming…? And what did you do with the sink?!”

 “Don’t go in there!” Charlie cried out, staring at the mess at the floor and the balloons floating over the ceiling. “It’ll get you! It’ll get you, don’t go in there!”

 “What the hell are you talking about, Chuck?!” Mr Decker cursed. “Jesus, what did you do with the pipes? Are you insane?!”

 “Why don’t you believe me? Can’t you see it?!”

 “See what?!”

 “The blood!” Charlie yelled, staring up at his dad with wide, terrified eyes. “The blood and the water, don’t you see it?!”

 “Okay, that’s enough!” Carl declared. “Get up and fix this right now before water really does come spilling out of the pipe.”

 “But…!”

 “Chuck, if you don’t shut up right now and fix this, I swear I’ll grab that wrench and make sure you won’t be able to sit comfortably for a month! Get to it.”

 Mr Decker stared down at him and Charlie could tell that he was as disgusted as he was afraid of him. He looked at the cupboard and when he saw nothing, he left Charlie to deal with it on his own. The woman was gone, slithered right back into the drain like a cockroach but Charlie could almost see her there still.

 Carefully, using the wall for support, Charlie stood up. He tiptoed around the spreading puddle on the floor, eyes drawn to the pipe, then he bolted right out of the back door, without looking back.

_Bill Denbrough gets a kiss_

 

 They got out of class the day the school bell rang one last time to mark the end of the school year. Boys and girls ran past each other down the halls with their mark books in hand, some of them mopping and discontent and other smiling brightly at the thought of showing their good grades to their parents.

 Bill Denbrough was not that enthusiastic about the summer. In fact, he was almost anxious. School wasn’t his most favourite but it was a distraction and ever since Georgie died, a good distraction was all he needed. He wasn’t that eager to go home where he would have to pretend to be fine while his parents made him feel unwanted and cold. They had changed a lot after…after, and Bill knew why, he understood why, but he never could accept it. Not completely. The word home had lost its meaning the day they brought Georgie’s cold body home, home had become the opposite of love. Being there choked him, the weight of his parents’ loss made him feel as though he had died that day with his brother and was now a ghost stuck between worlds. He ate with his parents and he talked to them but he was invisible. They never said a word back, as if they existed on entirely different plains of existence.

 That’s why Bill had nobody to share the joy of his good grades with and he almost feared going back home to the guilt and neglect that had made him cry more than he did for Georgie over the past few months. His eyes had been like a running faucet left opened and there were nights where the fear of being forgotten had such a tight hold on him he couldn’t even think to close his eyes and sleep.

 His only relief came from his friends and the promise of adventure with them. Bill knew that, as the responsibility of their leader fell on him, he could rarely let them know how hard his situation was on him. Sometimes he wanted to tell them that he wasn’t as great as they thought but just when he felt ready to scream out to the world that he’s had enough, he grit his teeth and marched forward for their sake. All it took was one look of question, of infinite trust, and he was back in the game. That is, until next time.

 There was one other thing Bill reminded himself of as they walked down the hall, their backpacks weighing on their thin backs, full of summer textbooks. Henry Bowers would be taking summer classes. That meant at least a month without him and though Bill wasn’t so sure about the rest, he had a feeling they wouldn’t try anything wasn’t Henry there to give his explicit order. Some of them had enough brains not to. Others, not so much.

 “Hey there, B-B-B-Billy.” Belch Huggins called after him when he passed the small group. Bill didn’t respond but he did throw them a cautious look over his shoulder. Henry was staring at him and one could tell just how bitter he was with his predicament. That look meant big trouble for Bill and the rest if he caught them later. Belch stood beside him with his hands in his pocket, Vic Criss looked down at them like he would at something particularly dirty and only Patrick Hockstetter followed them with one particularly lasting and disturbing look that never failed to make the invisible ants scatter across his skin. Charlie Decker threw them a quick look of his own but he dismissed them rather easily. He was a weird kid and sometimes Bill thought he was even weirder than Patrick, a bad kind of weird and a silent one, an unpredictable one. Hockstetter was pretty open about it but Charlie never said a word and he never did a thing until he finally got around to it.

 “Just don’t mind them.” Eddie Kaspbrak told him as they walked, as if his advice had meaning.

 “It’s h-gh-hard to d-do.” He stuttered. “H-He lives u-up th-the street.”

 They took their bikes and headed up the street, making plans for tomorrow and the days of the week without a care in the world. Richie Tozier would try to make them laugh with a joke or would try out one of his voices but otherwise, their conversations were full of boyish humour and childish innocence.

 They bought themselves ice-cream and chocolate bars with the money they had before Richie eventually had to go home. He threw Eddie a meaningful glance before he too made an excuse to leave and so the two headed together down the street. That left Bill alone with Stanley Uris. Stan was a rather quiet boy and his humour was dryer that Richie’s but nevertheless Bill greatly appreciated his stoicism and the rough exterior that filled him with a sense of comfort and strength. Out of all of their friends, he could safely admit that the most security he felt, he did in Stan’s presence. But Bill knew despite that that on the inside Stanley suffered great fears and insecurities. That’s why many times through the years of their friendship Bill had felt guilty when they would go beyond Stanley’s wishes and make him tag along in one adventure or other. They told themselves that it was good to sometimes get him out of his skin a bit and Stan always did enjoy their games no matter his caution but Bill was sure that many times he had felt the same he did when everyone relied on him a bit too much. Sometimes their energy and thirst for danger pushed Stan too far out of his zone of comfort. He never said anything, he had, on special occasions, yelled at them but the next day they were all okay, sharing ice-cream cones and drinking soda out of the bottle or making sandwiches before heading out to the barrens.

 Stanley was the most humble member of their club. The rest were like wild plants growing past his fresh and young stem and choking him, robbing him of the sun. Stan would say that, yes, without them he would hardly be the person he was now but he also felt greatly jealous of them and their courage. They weren’t the little kids with high hopes of the future anymore, they had grown up and the world was not the magical place it was anymore, so sometimes Stan worried. He worried that Bill would make the wrong decision and that when he did, he would have to follow through with it. Not because he would necessarily want to but because it would be expected of him. All of them were ready to jump in the fires for their leader but that didn’t mean Stan had to like it.

 What he did like was Bill’s company as they walked in silence. What he did like was Bill’s attention and the way his stutter lessened when they would occasionally talk. At those times it seemed that the shadow that had befallen the knight in shining armour that was Bill Denbrough lift like a bad curse and ease and comfort would wipe away the torture that seemed to linger in his large eyes. It made Stan very special to know that he could help Bill relieve his tension as they made sandwiches in his kitchen or played Monopoly at Bill’s.

 “Do y-y-you have t-to g-gh-go?” Bill asked him, oddly timid and rather hopeful. Stan knew how badly Bill disliked being alone or, at least, he learned so sometime after Georgie Denbrough’s tragic passing. Before that Bill would go out and play from time to time but after that it seemed that he couldn’t stand being home anymore, stuck between the four cold walls with the ghosts of a dead sibling and those of two living parents, forever silenced by their grief. He would ask them out every day as soon as his homework was done and they would roam the streets until dark or until the curfew rolled around but even then Stan would see the pain in Bill’s eyes when they would say goodbye. Stan could never imagine what it could be like to go home to silence. He had always had a good and close relationship with his own parents…To think Bill couldn’t stand to be around his own baffled him.

 “I don’t really have anything to do.” Stanley shrugged, letting Bill know without explicitly saying so that he could make whatever plans he wanted and he would be there.

 “H-How ab-about we g-go to m-my place? We c-ch-can p-play some m-mo-monopoly?”

 “Sure.” Stan smiled and so did Bill. “But you know I’ll win, right?”

 “I’ll t-take a ch-chance.” Bill laughed and both of them strode towards Witcham Street.

 The Denbroughs weren’t home and so the two boys made each other lunch and had a piece each of the strawberry cake Mrs Denbrough had left in the fridge. Stan eventually did manage to win and Bill, who had expected such an outcome, decided not to be mad about it.

 They played for about an hour before the game slowly began to lose its charm and their attention strayed towards each other in the silence of the house. It was eerie, to say the least, to sit there on the living room floor and feel the echo of the life that had found its home there before. Bill could hardly remember how it felt to be home before Georgie and could tell by the way Stanley would occasionally rub away invisible shivers that he felt something wasn’t entirely right either. It was easy to feel it right away when you weren’t used to it – the feeling of emptiness that engulfed you like a blanket of dry ice and squeezed around you until the air eventually evaporated from your lungs and your body began to itch. The feeling came from the inside where the desperate fingers couldn’t scratch. The real nightmare was inside the mind where the soul couldn’t touch.

 That was hardly odd for Bill anymore, what surprised him was that his hands felt suddenly clammy and the time stilled while they breathed in the silence. He was horribly cold but some inner turmoil raged inside him and its heat clashed with the chilling outside to create a very frightening feeling.

 “Are you okay?” Stan asked with a questioning tilt of his head. Almost as if he was afraid to hear an answer he reached towards the game board again to reset everything for another game. “How about another round? Or we can play some cards? Make a card tower…?”

 “I-I g-ghh-got to go t-to th-the b-b-b…” Bill reached up to brush away a few stray droplets of saliva from his lips as the stubborn word refused to come out. Stan waited for him patiently to finish but when Bill stood up abruptly, he wanted to follow him, to catch him if he ended up choking around the syllable. “I’ll be r-r-tight b-back.”

 “Why…? Big Bill?”

 He watched as Bill walked around the couch and then up the stairs, the sudden tension refusing to leave his body. Stan could feel it buzzing just under his skin and he couldn’t relax his strained muscles. He felt as if he had swallowed a metal rod that kept his body straight in a very unnatural position. He looked down at the Monopoly board and wished Bill would be back sooner. Stan would never admit but being alone made him feel very uncomfortable. As if he could feel the barest hint of what Bill felt and it filled him with grief for his friend.

 Upstairs Bill shut the bathroom door with exaggerated force and splashed his face with a bit of cold water. He looked himself in the mirror and was shocked to see how pale he looked. Why? What had happened to make him feel the way he did? He had had Stan over before so he couldn’t be that nervous. Or maybe it felt different to have Stan alone now? There was some other force that made the experience different and it scared Bill, it confused him.

 He walked out of the bathroom slowly and carefully closed the door behind his back. With a heavy stomach, Bill lingered in the hall and slowly looked down it to the door that belonged to Georgie’s room. As if it was the source of the chill, the tomb of misery. Bill liked to go there from time to time, to remember the love he had for his little brother and still felt deeply. It didn’t comfort him and he didn’t feel any better to remember that Georgie was gone and would never be back but it felt good, in an odd kind of way, to keep him alive through his possessions.

 Bill watched the door wirily, heart thumping wildly in his chest. He waited for something impossible to happen without knowing what exactly. Suddenly, with the sound of a distant creek, it happened. The door opened, moved by an invisible draft or force from inside. Bill couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe, staring numbly as the wooden door opened slowly. The muffled crackling of something joined that of the rusty, unused hinges and Bill’s breath stuttered as he thought it very much resembled that of the cracking of sore joints or, even worse, that of bones breaking.

 The stench of rot and dirty water washed over him and a horrible shudder made his gangly body spasm with nearly painful seizures. Bill clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, holding onto the hope that it was all a very fake hallucination but the bony hand slowly, slowly dragging the top of a body through the threshold of Georgie’s room was real.

 “Bill…? Bill, are you okay?”

 His eyes snapped open when the concerned voice reached him, chasing away the shadow of terror and the hold it had on him. The ghostly figure was gone and the door was shut. When Bill saw that, he released the heavy breath he had been holding in his burning lungs. He turned around and nearly screamed when he found himself standing face to face with Stanley. They took a step away from each other and Stan raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

 “Are you okay?” He asked gently and Bill shook his head. He didn’t know how to explain what he had just seen or if he wanted to but he was suddenly overcome by a mixture of feelings that overwhelmed and confused his tired mind. As close as he was to tears, Bill also felt a weight in the pit of his stomach, like a ball of melted steel. It ignited in him a feeling like no other before. “What happened? Why did you leave like that?”

 “I-I d-d-d…” Bill bit his lip, his face going red and warm with the effort. When he couldn’t stand the understanding, almost parental in its warmth look on Stan’s face, he looked away.

 “Take your time.” His friend urged. “It’s okay, Big Bill.”

 The tears that rolled down Bill’s cheeks next made both of them feel helpless – Bill because he was acting so needy and starved for every bit of attention he could get and Stan because he had no idea what to do or say. The boys were no strangers to showing each other their emotional scars and weaknesses and sometimes the need to cry easily defeated the embarrassment of doing so in front of the rest. Bill had cried before and they had all consoled him with careful words and gentle embraces but now that Stan was alone, what could he do? He was always cautious and afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing when forced to comfort any of them and Bill was always so strong. His reaction now was so sudden that Stanley was baffled.

 “I-I’m s-ss-sorry.” Bill sniffled, his stutter making his words nearly unintelligible. He opened his mouth to say something else but when he looked at Stan he felt such guilt that all that came out was a set of wet sobs.

 “Hey, it’s okay, Bill.” Stan tried again, wrapping an arm around Bill’s heaving shoulders. He felt the other flinch under the comforting pressure as if it had startled him and Stan almost moved away before Bill relaxed and even stepped closer, silently begging until Stan wrapped both his arms around his shaking friend. “You’re okay…It’s all going to be okay.”

 Bill’s damp cheek touched his bare neck and Stanley felt the cold smears of bitter tears against the otherwise warm skin. A deep sob left Bill’s lips and he looked, slowly, back at the door of Georgie’s room. Half-expecting to see the mutilated body dragging itself through the floor, he squeezed Stan just a bit tighter. Only when he saw that nothing was there did Bill allow himself to fall into the hands of the relief.

 “Are you feeling better?” Stanley asked him when Bill’s sobs subsided. His voice was hushed and his hot breath tickled the shell of Bill’s ear in a way he would’ve found bothersome but now it felt like the touch of a hot needle tickling his bare skin. It made everything feel real, the fear of what he had just seen and then the odd warmth engulfing him with Stanley there.

 He nodded weakly, pressing his forehead into Stan’s shoulder. He felt the tension in him and was instantly thankful that he was there and that he hadn’t let him go yet. He didn’t know if he could get a grip so soon if he did.

 And Stan almost knew that. He felt the tension between them melt and his previous worry left him. His body relaxed into Bill’s as if he needed the touch as much as him. He was no sadist but to have Bill so distraught, soaking the comfort he gave him made him feel like he had done something for Bill, like he had repaid himself for years of Bill carrying their suffering and weakness on his shoulders. The bright personality and the strong person was bare before him like no other time before.

 The gentle, warm pressure Bill felt against the side of his forehead finally made him raise his head, shocked by the otherwise kind gesture that was Stanley’s feathery kiss. They found themselves so close that the tips of their noses touched when Bill looked up at him, the familiar confusing feeling of before making itself known. Stan stared down at him, visibly shocked by his own courage. His hands suddenly tensed across Bill’s middle, feeling numb and cold. He blushed hotly but neither of them pulled away and despite what he expected, Bill didn’t push him off. Instead, his eyes flickered once down to Stanley’s trembling lips and the fear and disgust of the sudden new need diminished, numbed by a heavy feeling of want that felt almost supernatural.

 Bill’s eyes lingered on the pair of thin lips for only a second before he looked back at Stan's eyes. Just as he almost leaned in, he spotted the spark of shame pass like a dark shadow across Stan’s face and the desire easily faltered, replaced by the same poisonous feeling. He bit his lip. He wasn’t about to cry again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, hey, I'm so fucking new to this! I don't even know what I just did but I hope it's remotely good. This is just...layering the way for the drama to come. So, I'm like reading IT now (I don't really like this book much) and I haven't analyzed the characters like I normally would before going on to write a fic so this Stenbrough bullshit is based entirely on my carnal understanding for both characters, I hope I'm not that far from the truth. Also, I'm at this part of the book where I feel such a...large and sick sexual tension between just...everyone...It's really odd and I thought I would piggy-back off it to start off Bill and Stan's thing (and I was greatly disturbed so this fic will be disturbing too, eventually)...Again, tell me if I'm wrong. Also, I'm going for some good horror with this entire fic, horror's been my thing forever and I feel it's justified to give my take on it if I'll be doing fiction of Stephen King. So, tell me honestly how well I'm doing with it! :) Chime off in the comments with other notes I should know, thank you. Also, thanks a lot for reading and I hope you keep up with this.


	3. Eddie Corcoran takes a breath

_Richie Tozier misses the moment_

 Richie Tozier was not a patient boy and everybody knew it. It was no secret and he never lied, he made sure to show it. He was never patient when it came to his friends, always knew what he wanted, how to get and how to get it at the moment. Richie might have been too eager but he knew how to play his cards just right so when he called Eddie out to the barrens while Bill and Stan were playing their unfortunate game of Monopoly, he knew what he was doing. And that was tricking Eddie Kaspbrak into a kiss.

 Now, Eddie was not stupid and he was not dense. They’ve been toeing around the line for a little over a year now and both of them know where it’ll lead them. It’s a pure feeling of joy when Richie’s close to Eddie, it’s heartache that ripples through him at the mere thought of Eddie being away that makes him want to keep the other close, to hold and touch and never let him go. Richie’s needy, starved for attention and approval like never before and he doesn’t deny it. Eddie though, he has a bit of a problem.

 Richie might be okay with acting like a love-struck doggie, waggling his tail whenever Eddie smiled, but Eddie sometimes felt a bit too intimidated by his energy, a bit too overwhelmed, a bit too close…Always a bit something bordering the uncomfortable of being around Richie. He was enigmatic, he was wild and chaotic and though that showed his childish view of a perfect world where something as innocent as love was easy to get once feelings were shared, Eddie felt different. He sometimes didn’t need and couldn’t take Richie being so close. He wanted Richie. He did. But what Richie wanted was far beyond what Eddie could give. And that seemed like something always hiding between them, something nobody cared to look deep enough to see…

 One of the little joys Eddie denied Richie was that of gentle pecks and sloppy make-out sessions like those typical for the couples on TV, the ones Richie would copy from. And the reason was far less daunting than Richie thought – Eddie could not let him or allow himself in turn to kiss Richie. Whenever he felt his breath ghosting over his face he froze, his heart spasmed painfully like he was on the verge of cardiac arrest, his mind would scream out _WRONG, WRONG, WRONG_ like never before. Did Richie know how many germs there were in human saliva? The mere thought of it made Eddie imagine his tongue falling off in blisters and horrible pain as soon as he let Richie’s touch it. It’s a horrible fear that grips him and refuses to let go, even more overpowering than the guilt he feels when he sees Richie’s frown, his disappointment. It’s so strong for a moment before morphing into sadness and rejection that Eddie doesn’t really want him to feel. He loves Richie. But he doesn’t know if he’s the right thing for him. They were growing boys and surely one day Richie would want to make their relationship real, solidify their connection. He would want sex, he would want intimacy that made Eddie shudder, that horrible and dirty the thought was. He didn’t know if he ever would be ready for it and Richie would wait, sure, but how patient was Richie Tozier?

 Very little, he presumed. Because when Richie got a little too eager to get Bill and Stan off their backs, Eddie knew what he wanted. He wasn’t scared of him, he knew that one word alone would get Richie off his back and if it didn’t, Eddie could knock a little sense into him easily. What Eddie feared, more than the germs, was the misery on Richie’s face once he leaned away so subtly but still painful to watch. He hated hurting Richie so. Maybe he did love him, maybe he really did feel alone without Richie there, but what was he to do when he was so damn afraid?

 “And then my dad told mom to let me have another piece of the pie.” Richie’s babbling on their way down the beaten path into the barrens. He’s walking just ahead so Eddie doesn’t have to fear him seeing his rather worried face. “I look at Mike across the table, right, and he nearly spits out his juice when I…Eds? Are you okay?”

 “What?”

 He looked up from the dry ground to face Richie and he found him oddly concerned as he pushed up his glasses.

 “Are you okay?” He repeated. “You’re pretty quiet. Should I start with the better stories now or…?”

 “It’s not that.” Eddie denied with a shake of his head and quickly caught up. He didn’t want to let Richie think too much about him though he knew he would exaggerate later and make a big deal out of it. “I’m fine.”

 “Thinking about sucking the new inhaler later?”

 “Fuck you, Richie.”

 They went along the lines of familiarity again with the banter and it was a territory that felt safe, at least for Eddie. So he let his thoughts of worry go for now. Richie was no horny dog with a one-tracked mind and even if he did want kisses sometimes, he was not too pushy. Eager yes, but never pushy. Eddie knew well that all Richie wanted was for him to show affection sometimes too, something that went beyond the regular hand-holding when they were alone for sure and out of sight. He wanted more than hugs. It was only natural. Eddie did too, in secret.

 They sat down eventually on the dry grass by the bed of dirty water crossing the barrens like a few others that created the net of what seemed to be the blood of a living creature. In a way, Derry was a creature and it was pretty much alive. But Richie had never stopped to think about it until he saw the embodiment of the little town coming to say hello in all its dirty glory.

 “You know that I don’t like it when you do that?” Eddie said when he saw Richie reaching for his cigarettes, hidden wisely in the inside pocket of his thin jacket. It was too warm so he held it in hand.

 “Do what?” He asked, shaking out a cigarette as if he didn’t know already.

 “Smoking.” Eddie clarified.

 “Well, that’s just because you’re too jealous you can’t join.”

 “Yeah, and get lung cancer and have to breathe through my throat at twenty-five? Sure, of course.”

 Amused by how defensive Eddie always got when Richie did something remotely dangerous considering his health, Richie blew out the smoke of his first drag into his face. His grin became that much smugger when Eddie scrunched up his little nose in disgust and waved it away furiously before the ashen cloud came any closer to his personal space.

 “Richie, seriously?! You’re honestly such a turd sometimes!”

 “You love me either way!” Richie protested. It was no lie, though just why Eddie dealt with him was beyond all rational perception.

 Eddie licked his lips; they felt suddenly dry. This was what he had dreaded, their conversation to take a much different turn. He watched as Richie finished the cigarette before throwing the butt away (the barrens were already becoming a pretty dirty place and what was one cigarette butt compared to the used condom Richie had pointed out to him once?), teeth playing over his lower lip and fingers ghosting over his inhaler like the anxious hand of a cowboy over the holster where his weapon lay secure. As if it would make the worry go away as if it meant anything. Eddie liked to believe it did.

 When Richie leaned just close enough so he could smell the cigarette on his clothes and breath, Eddie took out his metaphorical gun and took a nice long gulp of medicine. Richie watched him almost baffled. In an instant, he pulled away and looked almost embarrassed as he resumed watching the dirty stream rushing down its road.

 “You were saying…?” Eddie nearly stuttered. He now knew how Bill felt when he fought the stubborn words.

 “No, nothing…I mean…” Richie muttered and Eddie followed the movement of his tongue as it peaked out to wet his own lips. He seemed almost confused. “It’s nothing, is all, I was just trying to…”

 “What?” Eddie gasped, the breath rushing through his windpipe in such shock that he felt like he deserved a reward for such acting talent for a split moment.

 “Well…” Richie trailed off. He was thrown off, it appeared, by Eddie’s sudden action and though it was expected and something he did almost as naturally as breathing in real air, it seemed almost out of place, or too well placed, now. “I was just going to…you know.”

 He tried again, sliding closer to Eddie, his clammy hand reaching over to lay over his on the ground between them. Eddie felt a sudden wave of warmth, of affection, then the painful pinpricks of icy fear coming over him, unwanted and dark. He felt Richie’s breath as he exhaled slowly. He shut his eyes. No, this wasn’t how a first kiss should feel, not how it should be with a person you loved. Germs, Eddie’s restless mind supplied, germs everywhere, coming to bite his tongue off and make his teeth fall out a second time.

 “Richie…” He went to say, only the name came out soft, almost a sigh, and not in the frantic way Eddie had hoped. His hand itched to grab the inhaler again, knock Richie’s glasses off in his haste to get it to his mouth, but he waited to see what would happen, waited for Richie to get the hint.

 “Eddie,” Richie repeated in almost the same tone and just before Eddie realised that there was no Eds, no Eddie Spaghetti, he repeated, this time much more frantic. “Eddie…!”

 His eyes snapped open not so much as a response to the rushed whisper but the painful way Richie suddenly grasped his arms. Had Eddie been about to faint? Was it that visible? No, he realised when he looked up at Richie, he was staring at something behind him, his eyes as wide as plates behind the thick glasses.

 “Richie? Richie, what’s wrong?” Eddie asked, putting his own hands over the ones squeezing painfully into his bony arms in hopes of them losing their hold. They didn’t.

 “That…” Richie stuttered. “That, do you see that?”

 Slowly, Eddie turned to look over his shoulder, despite how hard it was with Richie holding onto him so. He saw nothing but a few tufts of bushes leading into a patch of trees before they too disappeared and merged with the rest of the forest. Just behind it was the road and he could hear the occasional echo of cars passing by. The river slithered like a snake between them, its waters seeming just as greasy as a reptile’s belly under the spark of the summer sun. But there was nothing there to cause such distress and when Eddie turned back to Richie, he tried to say just that. The terror painting his love’s face, however, didn’t allow him.

 “There’s nothing there, Richie.” He said in that sickly sweet tone his mother used to bribe him into obedience. “There’s nothing there, I swear. Calm down, okay?”

 “How don’t you see it? It’s right there!” Richie insisted but again, when Eddie turned to look, there was nothing. “Seriously? You don’t see it? How don’t you see it?!”

 “See what, Richie?!”

 “The…” He hesitated. “The Clown…”

 What Eddie couldn’t see would hide in the back of Richie’s mind like a haunting apparition till the day he forgot. It was not as disturbing as it was peculiar and that’s what really, utterly scared Richie Tozier who would’ve otherwise found it amusing. To see a clown in the middle of nowhere, an honest to God clown with all its clownish features, a Bozo in the flesh, from the face paint and painted smile all the way to the ears. It waved at him and smiled and Richie felt like a little boy in the middle of a carnival; a little boy afraid to death of the silent misters with fake smiles giving him balloons.

 “Getting it on, Richie?” The clown asked coyly, its voice ringing inside Richie’s damn empty head. “I bet I can suck you better than Eds can!”

 “Eddie…” Richie mewled, clinging to his boy like a drowning man to a wooden raft in the eye of the storm. “We got to leave, come on!”

 “But, Richie…” Eddie tried to say as Richie grabbed his hands and howled him up to his feet. He would’ve done anything at that moment, he would’ve kissed him, let him do whatever he wanted and needed if it meant Richie would just stop and explain.

 But Richie didn’t, he had no time. He dragged Eddie away never minding his stumbling or that his legs were too short for him to catch up with his long strides. He had never felt so much danger before, like if they had stayed something horrible would’ve happened but what exactly, Richie’s imagination and knowledge of horror movies were both too short to comprehend. He looked back, whipping his head back for only a short glance if only to chase away the horrible feeling of being watched and followed. There was no clown. Only emptiness and trees in the distance.

 “Okay, that’s enough!” Eddie declared suddenly. He didn’t stop marching after Richie though. “What’s going on, Richie, just slow down and explain!”

 “I can’t right now.” Richie said. “No, I just can’t right now, not right now…”

 Mimicking him, Eddie looked back once at the spot where they had sat, where he would’ve had his first kiss. He expected to see nothing more there, nothing to trigger an immediate response…

 …But he was so wrong, so wrong in all his innocent thinking. Because only for a second as short as a blink, Eddie Kaspbrak saw what he can still name with great confidence and only much later when Richie really kisses him soon after that the thing is truly the disturbed, jagged and lifeless embodiment of disease itself. Rotting limbs and soft flesh hanging down from dried bones like Christmas decoration, a hanging mouth with no lips and no teeth full of blisters instead and – oh, God – it had no nose. The image of distortion and decay, the one filling Eddie’s worried mind whenever he thought of anything sexual, anything with Richie.

 A whimper tore itself from his lips. Good, Eddie thought. He nearly screamed.

 

_Eddie Corcoran takes a breath_

 He did, alright, take his last breath right in front of Charlie Decker’s eyes and he, as an only witness, found it very satisfying a thing to see. And the heat stirring in his pants was proof of it.

 It happened long before the first disappearances became fact and just soon after Georgie Denbrough was brought home dead. It was a special occurrence, one Charlie never got to see again, but it shaped his perception and served as another stone paving the road of his hellish life; what was to become of him in just a few years’ time. After what he saw through his kitchen window that autumn day the kid died and mostly after the shock he received that past summer in his kitchen, Charlie nearly sighed when that day he saw Patrick Hockstetter strangle Eddie Corcoran until the very last gasp whisked past his blue lips. It was such a relief if only because it meant that it was all real and not in his head. Georgie Denbrough could not in any way have died the way he saw him die because the one responsible for all the disappearances was a living, breathing man. That night Charlie’s dreams were warm and settled and it was the best sleep he’d had in a very long time…

 But as horrible as it appeared, maybe Charlie had to elaborate why exactly he felt good. To do so, he might have to start from the beginning.

 After Georgie’s death, Charlie Decker was an emotional shock. He was a mess of misery and confusion, even more so than the family. Why? Not because he felt compassion for them, he was incapable of such a thing most likely, and not because he cared if a little boy died or not, that did not concern him. What had gotten Charlie was that he had seen it happen, he had stood behind the kitchen window with a bucket of dirty water from the basement in hand, ready to go out and dump it in the garden outside when he saw the little boy run through the river of rainwater that had become of Witcham Street. He was impossible to miss in his yellow raincoat. Charlie recognised him almost immediately and he stood to watch the child run before abruptly falling to his knees in the puddle in front of the drainage shaft. Dread settled over him without any plausible reason but Charlie had been getting chills out of the blue lately that he couldn’t really explain.

 Then, just as the kid had been kneeling in the water, he screamed. Something inside the shaft tried to pull him in and Georgie Denbrough struggled back, wailing like the alarm of a fire truck. Charlie nearly dropped the bucket on the kitchen floor; his fingers slacked around the handle and the warmth of life left his limbs until all he could do was stare numbly through the window as blood flew down the drain and the stream of water like a heavy fountain of red. People ran out to see what was happening and Charlie even spotted his own dad’s reddish head as he ran across the street. That’s when he finally averted his gaze but not before he saw the bright red surface of a balloon peeking out from the shaft.

 He tried to suggest the amazing vision of the balloon to his mother but even she looked at him with pity and told him it would all be alright once the commotion settled. Secretly she was only glad that it hadn’t been her son to die that day.

 The only other person he tried to tell that, and of the kitchen incident, was Vic. But he only laughed and told him he was crazy before Charlie could even get to the point. Maybe he was right.

 There was a very subtle change in the gang after word got out about Georgie Denbrough’s death and the very odd circumstances surrounding it. They did not talk about it because it was not a very convenient or engaging conversation to have and they tiptoed around the subject of being a little bit more careful when they were out on the street, in the barrens, the town dump…But there was no discussion and when Henry stopped really bothering Bill Denbrough for the few months remaining of the school year, the rest did the same. Charlie had never had much fun picking on Bill because he knew the kid, they were neighbours, and if Bill happened to tell his mom, she would most likely tell Charlie’s and that would get him grounded for sure. Mrs Decker would not raise a bad boy in her house. But lately, Charlie had stopped seeing Mrs Denbrough around town or even outside of her house so he supposed that he could beat her son up in the middle of their lawn and she would probably not bat an eye. That was really sad, actually.

 What finally put Charlie’s mind at ease happened one cold day, roughly the middle of December, when the windows of the stores were covered in Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, it should not have calmed him at all. Charlie would later, months later, remember that day and wonder just where he stood in the chart of deranged and mentally unstable to have allowed himself to hang out with the friends he kept close another month now. More often than not he only accepted that it was real, it was true and he approved it.

 They were all together in the town dump after failing to get a stray cat, the tail of which Patrick had run over with his bicycle a few minutes before, from underneath the rusted remains of a car resting close. The animal had scurried away as soon as they let it be. It was cold and a thin cover of frozen snow covered the ground. There were no rocks to throw at the abandoned TVs and swimming in the quarry was out of the question. They should’ve gone home but there was nothing better to do. Henry dreaded the thought and if he had to choose between freezing outside with the trash or inside with Butch Bowers, he would easily choose the first. Winter was a bad season for the Bowers; Butch became agitated and angry because there was no work to do and Henry got the bad end whenever he was in a particularly mean mood. It was easier to pretend he wasn’t there whenever he was out, whenever he was with the people he could tolerate as friends and who he could even allow himself to have fun with without the fear of judgement. Yeah, it was good too that his friends were almost as sick as he was, if not more so, and they could try to deny it but it was true. Hockstetter was crazy enough, Decker was cut out for Juniper. Vic had a bit too much fun and Belch had a very bad temper, one he could’ve grown out of in time if he had lived longer.

 That easily summed up Henry’s type of companion and though he had told himself that he was with them because nobody else could really handle to be around them separately, he had enough mind to figure out that he had sucked up to them nice and tight like a leach and he refused to let go because, without them, life would be one very miserable circle of hell. Stuck between the loneliness and the abuse at home, Henry wouldn’t have the single chance to live through high school. He was most likely too stubborn to allow himself the idea of dying before that or perhaps he couldn’t even comprehend that it was a valid option but even if he did, why would he want to? Life was shitty but there were things worth keeping it up for. Getting it on, as Charlie put it once and kept saying after. For the sake of getting it on in life, one needed a not so sane mind and an actual life in his hands he could manipulate. Because surely if Henry was alive still than he had been given a mission and he would bring it to an end, be that mission murder or abusing an own wife and kids, be it saving an elderly woman from an oncoming truck or adopting an orphan. Then again, Henry was no saint, so it was most likely that his sacred mission would be to burn Derry down and save the world of its wretched existence. If his friends were there when he did, he would be even thankful.

 So he thought of that while he watched Patrick set the tire on fire from his throne of an old and cold car seat. The wet cardboard smoked and stank with the rubber as it melted into the equally damp wood Belch had dropped in the middle of the tire but Patrick was sure it would burn and Charlie sacrificed one perfectly good and empty notebook for the sake of their warmth or Hockstetter’s experiment. He had always been fond of his lighter and even more so of the bright red flame licking the air like a thirsty deer in the middle of a draught. It was an odd fascination Henry shared and even more so Charlie. Henry had thought many times as he watched him and Patrick interact that they spoke a completely different, rather inhuman language that he also knew but misread sometimes or misunderstood enough to miss its whole purpose until he finally did figure it out. Before that, however, he found it peculiar and even confusing because Patrick was a quiet evil and Charlie appeared normal (though how normal could he be when he hung out with them?). Still, there was something not right with either of them and it was scary to see the understanding they shared whenever their conversations reached more morbid territory. For example, Charlie would speak of death and murder the same way Patrick would – with amusement, although a subtle one.

 Vic is sitting beside him on what’s left of the seat, his long legs sprawled on the cold ground in front of them. His boots look almost too heavy for his feet to carry. Victor’s not a very graceful boy, he’s lanky and he seems like he’s grown too fast for his body to adapt to his sudden change in size. He’s not as tall as Patrick whose body quirks like a rag doll, limbs waving awkwardly around him like he doesn’t know or doesn’t care to learn how to carry himself properly. Vic’s a bit better but he’s definitely not the definition of grace. Still, Henry thinks and Belch’s pointed out, he looks like a girl from behind if he cared to wear tighter clothing. Vic sometimes meets those accusations with a scoff or scowl, once he threw a punch when Patrick laughed longer and louder than he should have, but there were those odd times where he would bow his head and accept it and it was then that Henry thought that maybe Vic’s gotten Patrick’s disease; the queer one.

 That changes very little between them. Actually, Henry’s also not sure that the opposite attraction or whatever disease Butch calls it, is even a valid point to exist, like that of suicide. There are things in the world that are written in stone, rules of nature that are not meant to be broken and there’s nothing beyond them. Women and men fell in love, they had families most of the time and they had sex. Men and men did not, neither did women and women, so that was unnatural and a sickness of the new age. Too much freedom. Henry knew nothing about it. He didn’t care. When Patrick took off Richie Tozier’s jeans once last year he had just laughed, taking it all as a joke, and when he even offered Vic to suck him off once after another banter of just how feminine Vic looked (though, in all honesty, he had not a single feminine curve) he had taken his laugh and grin as proof of his sick humour. Charlie had thought so too but he changed his mind when he saw Patrick warming Vic up with hugs and kisses – and a bit more special kind of attention – in that exact spot, on that exact car seat, last summer. He never raised the subject in front of either of them and what Henry didn’t know wouldn’t clog his poor mind with unnecessary bullshit so Charlie let the incident slide.

 But ever since then he’s felt a rather unusual tension between them that he can’t let go of and when he looks at Henry now, huddle in his very thin jacket for warmth, he wonders if he can feel it too. Probably not, Henry’s not dumb by all means but he’s not very smart either, he can’t feel the things Charlie can. He’s no expert either but he’s seen lust and hunger and he knows how it looks on a man. Carl Decker was no animal in bed and his wife had gone frigid the past few years but when Charlie was little there were many opportunities for him to hear and even see for himself what men and women did under the sheets. It shaped a rather unhealthy image in his mind that only became clear when he saw the same thirsty look in Patrick’s eyes from time to time and what scared him was that he would look at Henry like that sometimes and he would fall behind on their way home just to stare. If Charlie had a say in it he would get Patrick to leave for good what they have going between them but he can’t and he’s a bit curious to see where things would go. Nobody really likes putting up with Hockstetter…But he’s made a place for himself just under their skin.

 “You want to pull that closer, Henry?” Belch asked once the first flickers of a flame rise through the cloud of sour smoke. Compared to the white of the snow and its charming purity, it’s black and unwelcoming. The stench makes Charlie turn his back of the thick pillar and cough. “I think we’re getting somewhere with the fire…”

 They refuse easily because they’re not too fond of getting the smoke all over them; it smells like burnt skin and the rubber melts into the steadily burning wood. Patrick clicks his lighter shut and looks back at Charlie as if he’s expecting a thank you or even applause. He gets nothing for his effort.

 “You know, I heard another kid’s gone missing.” Vic speaks up out of the blue, drawing their attention.

 “Probably the magic clown from the sewer got him.” Henry mocks, eyeing Charlie until he turns to face him with a scowl. Of course, Vic would’ve told him, they’ve probably gotten a good laugh over Charlie’s fear. Though he’s said nothing about a clown, he hasn’t said anything about the woman or the voices either, so how would he know…?

 “Mind your own business, Bowers.” He bit back.

 “I heard it was the Corcoran kid.” Belch shrugged. “But his dad’s been beating him up lately, so he must’ve run off. No big deal.”

 Before Georgie Denbrough, Charlie would’ve thought the same or nothing at all. It wasn’t his problem. Eddie’s stepdad could’ve killed him for all they knew and it would make no difference. But now, his disappearance made him feel very insecure and very afraid for whatever reason.

 He looked back at Hockstetter who was quietly following their conversation (though it was hard to tell with how he only stared at the fire eating away at the junked piled over it). Their eyes met for a brief moment and Charlie caught something very nasty in the other’s face. Patrick was usually devoid of any expression of emotion, of anything at all that might give away his intricate thought process, but now he looked horribly smug and knowing like he was very much ready to coach Charlie through a horror show. Maybe he would’ve been the only one to nod with approval when, a mere three years later, Charlie’s name got all over the newspapers.

 “Yeah, I don’t buy it.” Charlie said.

 “But there’re no balloons, Chuck.” Hockstetter smiled, offering his words as a reassurance like his mom would speak when he was down with a fever. “Or maybe the clown ran off before he could give Eddie Corcoran one.”

 “I swear if I hear you mention that again…” Charlie threatened but his voice sounded almost too weak and when Patrick sniggered, he threw Henry a look. He was expecting to see him stand up for him but when he didn’t, Charlie leaned down to grab a handful of thick snow and ice. He threw it Patrick’s way and it hit him in the side of the face before falling apart; his only response was to laugh harder.

 “You sure it’s not that, Chuck?” He kept on. “You sure there’s no magic evil clown in the sewers?”

 “Keep that up, Hockstetter, and I’ll make your sick face look real pretty. Tell ‘em, Henry…”

 “Yeah,” Vic laughed, repeating his words with mock exaggeration, “tell ‘em, Henry!”

 That got a good laugh out of them but Charlie was in no mood for it. His mouth felt dry, his stomach hurt and he felt the bile rise to his throat. There was something not right, not right…

 “We were just joking, Charlie.” Belch promised.

 “And I’m not laughing.” Charlie barked. His harsh tone made the rest settle and soon they were back to their usual not so bright conversations.

 The fire died again and this time refused to burn no matter how long Patrick held the lighter to the charred wood. It only smoked and stank but it was too cold and wet to really catch. Eventually, too much time was lost in that activity that when the winter sun began to set and dip the dump in darkness, when the curfew came around, it was time to head home. That was inevitable and with more kids going missing the last thing they wanted was to get in trouble with the police.

 “I got to show you something.” Patrick said as he pulled him back. The rest were already heading in the direction of the street through the trash and car skeletons and Charlie stared after them hopefully. He was curious to see what Hockstetter had for him to see, as long as he didn’t rub off on him like he did on Vic, but at the same time, he dreaded it. Henry was the only one to throw him a look back when he fell behind, then he looked at Patrick and Charlie felt suddenly that he knew the secret he was about to be initiated into well. There was something between them and the only difference was that Charlie would end up liking it.

 “It better not be something like the shit you do with Vic, Patrick.” He warned, following Hockstetter in the opposite direction.

 “I knew you were watching.” Patrick grinned, his tone light and cheerful, almost like he was proud of what he had done and what he was doing. Was it Charlie, he would’ve been terrified; what if his parents found out, what if his dad found out his boy was queer? But the Hockstetters were odd, very odd people. Not the bad odd their son was but enough to fuel his own dangerous quirks. Most times they appeared almost afraid of telling Patrick anything but he too was very docile around them. He knew his thing, apparently, and he knew how to get what he wanted. Patrick was just a patchwork of made and learned formulas he knew how to use in his interactions with people. Charlie doubted he had anything particularly real about him, for a person as narcissistic.

 “Then why didn’t you say something? Why’d you keep it up when you knew I was there?”

 “Because you liked it, I thought I could give you a show. Or a preview…”

 Charlie didn’t really like his drawl this time. “Forget it.”

 They walked in an uncomfortable silence for a few more minutes after that and each time the frozen grass rustled under his feet Charlie would shudder, not because he was also horrible cold by now but because something in his gut was telling him to turn around and run back home. But that would be a stupid thing to do and just imagining Patrick’s teasing once they saw each other again was enough to make Charlie want to follow him.

 The cluster of forgotten trash was far behind them now and around them were the frozen barrens. The landscape was even more unwelcoming than before, naked trees sticking up like toothpicks and leafless bushes scratching at his clothes on the way down the offbeat path Patrick was leading him.

 “What exactly did you get me here for again, Hockstetter?” Charlie asks suddenly when the silence starts getting on his strained nerves. He’s looking around almost frantically now, as if something would jump out from between the trees and hedges lining the path and grab him. Little did he know then that the most dangerous thing with him was Patrick.

 “You’ll see, it’s just here…”

 All Charlie sees, however, are litter and the rusty, yellowed outlines of a refrigerator leaning against the dry stump of a tree a few feet away. It looked a lot like the ones back in the dump that would be locked and checked regularly if any unfortunate kid managed to lock itself inside and was too weak to push the heavy doors open. Abandoned fridges were a very good hiding spot for hide-and-seek and an even better closet for the skeletons of an unhealthy obsession.

 This particular one, however, as dirty and cheap as it appeared, gave Charlie an uncontrollable case of the chills. So he fell back and stood a few feet away, watching dumbly as Patrick opened it with a bit of force. The rusted door squealed like a dying pig on its way and Charlie saw his friend stroke the dirty inside almost lovingly with a hum of appreciation. The ungodly stench of rot washed over him and he covered his nose. What the hell could be in there?

 “Hey, no, you stay…!” Patrick sang suddenly and Charlie thought at first he was talking to him until he leaned down quickly to grab what appeared to be something weak and wiggling…It was no animal, what animal wore a jacket?

 “What the hell, Patrick…” Charlie whispered when he dared to walk closer. “What the hell?”

 Patrick looked at him with the joy of wicked pride brightening his otherwise blank face, like he had looked at him after lighting his notebook on fire. From the grown at him also stared the horrified eyes of Eddie Corcoran. The boy was dirty and pretty roughed up, he was shaking out of the cold and terror but despite the light force Patrick was holding him down with he couldn’t run, either too weak, too tired or stunned to see someone else but his tormentor there today. How long had Patrick kept him in there?

 “Patrick,” Charlie said again, surprised by the softness of his voice, “why?”

 “Because it feels good.” Was Patrick’s quick and very honest answer though Charlie had never known honesty from him.

 “Does Henry know?”

 “None of them know.”

 “Then why did you…”

 “So you can see, Charlie.”

 Maybe he had expected to very much impress him or intimidate him but he was doing a bad job because Charlie felt absolutely nothing. No compassion for Eddie, no amusement either or worship for Patrick – in fact, he was only a tad bit disgusted when he saw Patrick was very obviously turned on by the kid’s situation. He had grown pretty quickly since the days where his pudge would hang just a bit over the belt and maybe he had even stopped eating the same way he had stopped sleeping because he looked like a badly drawn animated villain and only the hard outlines of the bulge in his tight jeans made him a bit more intimidating, a bit more real and frightening. Though by the end Charlie would admit he had gotten a bit of a rise out of it himself, maybe that’s why he couldn’t get it up at that party a year or more later. Maybe it wasn’t because of the drugs then but because Charlie would forever lack this.

 Patrick made him watch again with the amusement of a predator toying with its food as he let go of Eddie Corcoran. The kid tried to scramble towards Charlie this time and this was amusing; the shock in his eyes when Charlie stepped in his way and nearly kicked him back towards Patrick was even sweet.

 “Please, I want to go home…” He hiccupped pathetically. “I want to go home to mommy…!”

 The two older boys shared a look and funny enough, Charlie snorted despite his desire to hold back the laugh. Another mommy’s boy…But he wasn’t any better; where was the one older kid to bring him to mommy that freezing night in the Allagash? No, he brought himself home, and when Patrick’s sleep became plagued by baby blubbering and screaming, didn’t he fix the problem for himself, didn’t he help his mommy too? Yeah, right they did. Eddie Corcoran was about to grow up and they’d make him.

 What was usually a very personal, very erotic experience for Patrick Hockstetter was now to be shared with Charlie as he killed his first actual struggling human victim and supposedly the last, not because he lost his taste or touch but because he didn’t have the time to break the record. But neither of them knew that as he pulled the kicking kid back by the ankles and settled over him. It felt like he had all the weight of the world and his breathing picked up when he had his hands around the crying baby’s thin neck. It was already dark and it was one cold December but Patrick really wanted to take some time and take off his jacket; it was horribly hot, sour sweat soaked his shirt. His eyes flashed brightly like those of a hyena and he licked his lips while he squeezed with the precision of a practised surgeon, then a bit more until Eddie Corcoran stuttered. Dogs and cats never begged with words, they did with their eyes, a mixture of such humane emotions it was hard to miss them, but there was something even better in hearing the desperation in a way he could understand.

 Locked in the heat of the moment it felt like they were all alone and Charlie’s mouth felt suddenly dry as he watched Eddie’s body spasm while he fought the inevitable. He saw Patrick lean up a bit so he was now on his knees over the kid, the net of veins crossing his thin hands and arms bulging with the effort he put. It was almost like he was squeezing a very stubborn lemon or trying to break an apple with his bare hands. Droplets of blood formed where the kid’s bitten nails dug into his skin. The wide grin splitting his face nearly in half reflected into Eddie’s wide eyes, blind with fright. That would be a very scary thing to see just before death, Charlie thought. And what had Georgie Denbrough seen the day he died…?

 He chased the thought away quickly. There was one answer and Charlie felt great relief when he realised that behind all those deaths and disappearances stood none other than his dear friend Patrick. Oh, why hadn’t he said so sooner…?

 “You’re hard, Charlie.” Patrick pointed out once Eddie Corcoran’s hands fell from his and beside his unmoving body. A wet patch was slowly soaking into the front of his worn jeans and Charlie realised with disgust and amusement that he had wet himself in his last moments. “You liked it that much?”

 “Shut up, Hockstetter.” Charlie warned. He wasn’t the only one turned on and something told him it wasn’t Patrick’s first time getting his rocks off with a little death and murder. He wasn’t the weirdo in this case.

 Loving the bite in his voice, Patrick grinned up at him. His face appeared ghostly now that the light was so very scarce and he looked even scarier than before. Charlie felt like he was the mirage of a Thanksgiving dinner of a tortured man in the desert, that’s how hungry Patrick looked.

 “You loved it, Charlie, admit it!” He urged with childish spite. Charlie couldn’t help but notice that he was a bit out of breath. “You fucking loved it…”

 “I guess I did.” He admitted softly, staring down at the body of Eddie Corcoran. Maybe he had.

 That night was the first in a very long time that Charlie Decker slept soundly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there goes another one! Honestly, I just now figured out that this story is meant to be some kind of plotless tale, Bowers gang centric of course, with bits of other stuff, but really, it's all my practice material. I originally had a plot planned but I think I might drop it and really end this piece at chapter 5. I'll be digging into another crossover I'm planning and a much more thorough one too, so maybe you'll like to look forward to that ;)  
> Now, about this chap...I don't know what to say. I've said this before and I will again, for me, Patrick Hockstetter is one of the most perfect fictional villains and I would've loved to see him kind of grow up and have a little story of his own in one of King's short story books but oh well. Fanfiction authors are here to deliver what the authors don't, I guess. And who can be better to face his sickness than the master of madness himself, Charlie Decker? In an essay I recently read about him, the author expressed his/her thoughts that Charlie's a really evil and manipulative kid and I'm willing to agree. Though the books makes one relate strongly to him and see him as a victim we have to admit that that isn't the case at all. In fact, he manipulated an entire classroom of kids to act as crazy as him and feel pity for him after he shot their teacher in front of them. That's what I call talent. Seeing how he and Patrick would've interacted was something I put some thought in so I hope I've...nailed it. Yeah, I hope I did a good job. This piece was written very quickly, in about two days, but I started writing late because I'm trying to edit this novel I have hanging over my head. It's a bit of a relief to get something done.  
> This was all, I guess, make sure to drop a comment and tell me how or if you've liked this, point out mistakes and stuff like that, do NOT hate, you've read the tags and have been warned about everything! Thank you for reading and see you next week! :)  
>  Short PS: You can easily hit me up on tumblr where I post notes about original fiction and fanfiction and generally pretty chill content, so never be shy to talk to me there -> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/j-fuckin-d  
>  Also, I take requests! Any fandom, any ship, no x readers! You can send them in my ask box on tumblr or my email (/jennykonstantinova5@gmail.com/). Thank you!


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